Monthly Archives: April 2016

It’s not every day you get an invitation to The White House. (I’ll admit it: I’m definitely going to put my invitation in an acid-free, archival album for my children and grandchildren to see.) So it was an absolute honor to be able to attend last week’s Early STEM Learning …

It seems like the older I get, the more time I spend with Lego bricks. Sure, I say that I buy the kits for my kids, but I’m always sitting on the floor next to them within minutes of opening the box. What’s more, the grown up part of me …

I don’t quite know when it hit me. Maybe it was when the man in black let me through the gates. Maybe it was when I walked past parking spaces that were reserved for people anyone would recognize. Maybe it was when I was standing at the threshold of a …

In many ways, the audience for PEEP and the Big Wide World is what you might expect. Every day, thousands of preschoolers, parents, and educators log on to this award-winning public media project to explore math and science—by watching videos, playing games, and finding hands-on activities they can explore in …

We’re thrilled that Olivia Thomas, who won last year’s 2015 National STEM Video Game Challenge in the High School Gamestar Mechanic category, is attending this year’s White House Science Fair. This is the sixth and final Science Fair of President Obama’s Administration, with more than 130 students representing 30 states who …

In their recent report, Opportunity for All?, media and policy expert Victoria Rideout and Rutgers University scholar Vikki Katz explored the current uses of digital technologies to help promote educational opportunities for all through a national survey of nearly 1,200 low-income parents of school-age children and in-person interviews with lower-income, Hispanic …

For several years now, children’s literature has been venturing step by step into the digital field, with all the creative force and originality that the domain has shown itself capable of. Beyond the simple digitalization of content in PDF or E-pub format, many producers (Nosy Crow, Tank & Bear, Camera …

“So, can you tell me what some of your favorite shows are?” As a researcher on the Families and Media Project, I had the opportunity to talk to several children about their media use. I sat in 8-year-old Lina’s kitchen as she tried to answer my questions, though it was …

Almost every child in the United States plays video games—91% of children ages 2-17, according to NPD. But how many kids make their own video games? I could not find any reliable statistics. Nowadays, one barely needs to write a line of code in order to build a video game …

We are excited to launch the 2016 National STEM Video Game Challenge, a competition that transforms student passions for game play into a pathway towards gaining core STEM problem solving skills… all while designing their own video games! Students are invited to create playable games on any platform or to …